As a Teacher-Librarian our first task is to motivate our students (at various grade levels) to seek information by giving them a situation where they can recognize their own knowledge gaps! This section is for us to share some resources and ideas that can act as a toolkit for this crucial and yet often overlooked (due to time constraints) instructional stage.

Students often enter the library chatting up a storm. I give them a back-door question to give them something to discuss that is relevant to the lesson but seems to have little or no relevance to school. (chj)